FreeNAS: Hardware vs. Hardware

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The Gecko

Active Member
Jan 4, 2015
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I find myself in possession of two different platforms on which I could host FreeNAS. I cannot use both since there is only room for one. I am turning to the community for opinions.

Usage Model:
  • iSCSI for Virtual Machines (30+ VMs, 3TB)
  • SAMBA/CIFS for Documents and Movies (low traffic, 14TB)
  • Looking to move away from iSCSI to Fibre Channel
Platform 1:
Platform 2:
Shared Hardware:
  • IBM M1015 HBA flashed to IT Mode
  • QLogic 2432 4Gb Fibre Channel card
  • 24x 1TB Hard Drives
  • 128 GB SSD L2ARC
Side-by-Side CPU Comparison Link

Wins for Platform 2:
  • I know that FreeNAS's iSCSI service and SAMBA/CIFS service tends to be single threaded, so the extra MHz of the Xeon would help there.
  • The DDR3 is 1.35V vs 1.8V (DDR2), so I could save some power there.
  • The Xeon idles at 0.8V while the Opteron is at a fixed 1.125V, again giving the power savings win to the Xeon.
What makes it hard to let go of Platform 1 is the extra 32 GB of RAM. Can you think of any reason to keep Platform 1?
 

vikingboy

New Member
Jun 17, 2014
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24TB array will be well served by either RAM setups. FreeNAS+AMD seems more problematic than FreeNAS+Intel so Id keep system two on paper. Of course, scientifically, you could configure and bench them both and keep the one you KNOW works best/fastest.

17TB of your 20TB (after formatting etc?) is getting close to FreeNAS 'reliable' limits (call it 80%?).

Read the how-to guides on FreeNAS forums for some good advice. Hope these rambling thoughts help
 

TuxDude

Well-Known Member
Sep 17, 2011
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Other advantages to Platform 2:
* The Xeon is significantly faster per-clock than the AMD - its not a direct 2.4 VS 1.8 comparison - per-core the Xeon probably has double the performance.
* Memory bandwidth on the Xeon platform is going to be significantly faster as well.

The only thing I could see as a benefit to Platform 1 is if you happen to already own PCI-X expansion cards that you want to use. It also seems you have an incorrect link for the Xeon MB - you listed X8DT6-F but the link goes to the page for a X8DTE-F. So I'm not sure if there is any advantage to Platform 1 having onboard LSI SAS or not.


I'd go with Platform 2 if it was my build.
 

Biren78

Active Member
Jan 16, 2013
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I'd go platform 2. You get encryption support which you don't get on the older amd's.
 

Joel

Active Member
Jan 30, 2015
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Another vote for platform #2. FreeNAS would probably work just fine with only one CPU populated if you want to save power, unless there are other consequences (less memory support?).